


Jealous Guy

by PAPERSK1N



Series: Don't Let Me Down [6]
Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: 1970s, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Drinking to Cope, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Long-Distance Relationship, Multi, Past Drug Use, Phone Calls & Telephones, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-27 04:47:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16695724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PAPERSK1N/pseuds/PAPERSK1N
Summary: Post Beatles-break up, John calls Paul's house late one night.





	Jealous Guy

“I recorded a song today.” John says, and, for perhaps the fifth time that evening, Paul can hardly believe who it is mumbling to him on the other side of the line.

 

They aren’t even in the same country, but it’s like he can _feel_ John’s breath, dry and nervous, fluttering against his ear, uncomfortably warm and still tinged with liquor. Is it bad that he can still fucking _smell_ John’s breath when there’s damn near four thousand miles of ocean stretching between them? Last he heard (not that he cares, not that he listens when John’s name is brought up in conversation, not that they’re anything _close_ to the semblance of _friends_ ) John and Yoko had flown to New York a week or so ago. They were going to record the rest of _John’s_ album there, because Yoko felt more at _home_ in New York. It didn’t matter that John’s home and his son and his entire _life_ was all right here in England. Yoko wanted the glitz and glamour of the states, so, of course, John went along and decided he wanted the very same thing.

 

“Anything I’d know?”

 

“Yeah, actually. I fiddled around with it in India for a while, _fuck-_ ” John sighs, and Paul can hear the strain in his voice and the clatter of his glass on the table after he takes another slug of what can only be assumed to be whiskey, phone pressed entirely too close to his mouth, every breath vibrating the speaker, John’s heavy pants ringing in his ears for the first time in far too long. “-remember India, Paulie? D’you… d’you remember when we bunked off meditation and smoked that hash ‘round the back of the ashram? I thought George was gonna nut ya.”

 

“I thought so too.” Paul replies, and he can’t help himself. He smiles wistfully at the memory.

 

He hasn’t talked much to George so recently either. It’s incredibly odd, to go from practically living in the pockets of three other lads with identical haircuts and collarless suits to _this_ \- living in seclusion on a farm with a baby and a daughter, a dog and some horses, a liquor cabinet with a lock and key that Linda hides in a drawer where she thinks he’ll never look. It’s hard to feel lonely surrounded by so much care and comfort.

 

(Paul somehow manages to feel it anyway)

 

“Nature’s child… mother nature’s… oh no- fuck, that was your one wasn’t it? No… this one didn’t make it to the album, but we did have a go recording it. George’s house I think…”

 

“ _Child of Nature_ ,” Paul tells him, because that’s what they do best, John and Paul. They finish each other’s sentences. They make sense out of each other’s abstract, and more so, they find it _easy;_ because nobody knows John better than Paul, and nobody knows Paul better than John.

 

Or- at least- that’s how things _used_ to be. Paul mentally kicks himself. He keeps doing this- forgetting that it’s _then_ rather than now- forgetting that things have become _different_ , like the sentimental old fool he is. There is no _John-and-Paul,_ he reminds himself. Not anymore.

 

All of that died just shy of a year ago. Lennon-McCarney was buried in a shallow twin grave with the rest of _The Beatles_ on their left, heaps of soil tossed, wreaths laid, cigarettes long stubbed out and that _beautiful_ album, left playing on a reel somewhere, tape still skipping.

 

“ _Child of Nature_!” John echoes, a smile in his voice. Paul fumbles with the packet of cigarettes on the table, hands shaking slightly as he lights one. “I knew you’d remember. Always count on _Paul McCharmly_ for some semantics, eh?”

 

“Of course you can.” the familiarity of the smoke reminds him of Abbey Road, _Lucky Strikes_ , those fancy imported fags that Ritchie loved and hated to lend out, but he and John would always sneak a few anyway. The familiarity warms his lungs, the brandy laid beside them chills his spine. “You can always count on me.” he tells John, and the bottle somehow wins their staring contest. He hasn’t taken a drink yet. This could be considered a win if he didn’t already feel guilty for breaking the wax seal.

 

“…always count on you.” John slurs, taking another stiff drink, sucking on his own cigarette, inhale-exhale-repeat. Maybe they’re always doing this, mimicking each other’s movements even when they’re thousands of miles apart. “Can I, though, Paul? Even… even now? Even though I… oh, how does it go again… I… _I made you cry_.” John sings the last part, and Paul frowns, chest aching at washed up memories of Abbey Road and contracts and lawyers before he even registers the tune, a brief offshoot of the song he remembers John tickling out up at the ashram, the lot of them sat together under the crystal clear stars, incense in the air, flowers in the girls’ hair. The early days of the ashram were so _good_ \- so _fun_ , even. It’s hard to picture how it all went to shit so quickly when those first two weeks were so _fucking_ blissful.

 

The ashram might’ve been what ruined them, actually, now that Paul has the luxury of hindsight. But in a way, it might just have saved them too.

 

“I remember. _I don’t need much to set me free-_ ”

 

“-No, no. Not anymore. I’ve changed it now.” John swallows thickly, words stumbling over each other, breaths clumsy and uneven. He’s drunk- Paul could tell this from the second he picked up the phone- but he’s pleasant enough within it. For now, anyway. “I changed it… for you, Paul.”

 

“ _John-_ ”

 

“- _Not_ just for you, don’t… don’t go getting ideas.” He laughs, and it almost that _same_ laugh, that stupid _devil-may-care_ , head back, eyes dark, tongue sharp-as-a-knife laugh that held Paul down in that Apple office a year or so ago and slit his throat over the papers. John had laughed like that then too, Yoko beside him as he looked Paul in the eyes and asked for a _divorce_ with such brashness. So _snidely_ , with a laugh in his voice and a smirk on his lips, Yoko at his side like a constant, sinister shadow. It might’ve just been the coke he was re-dabbling in at the time, but Paul could’ve sworn he saw _her_ laughing at him too, thin lips pressed into a tiny smile, nostrils flaring.

 

If Yoko had laughed, that would mean that she _knew_ the unknowable. John had always promised him that nobody would _ever_ know- but John broke a lot of promises to him in that study. He didn’t suspect that one more would dampen his conscience.

 

“…I was thinking about you though,” John continues, breaths slowing just gradually, almost as if he’s falling asleep, mumbling to Paul from inside a dream. “I was thinking about You and Cyn and Jules and… you and… Yoko, really. I was supposed to be for Yoko but it wasn’t- I couldn’t make the words fit without…”

 

“…without me?” Paul finishes- because, sadly, even now, he still always knows exactly what John is thinking. Moreover, Paul is long past being scared of speaking the truth aloud.

 

“Without you.” John’s voice is pained as he echoes Paul’s words, and Paul can feel the scratchiness in his own throat, feels the liquor John slurps warm his stomach, feels the lucky strike smoke in his lungs, two souls in tandem, breathing the same air on opposite sides of the world. “I wrote it for you Paul. I’m sorry.”

 

“I forgive ya, John.” Paul sighs, sipping his brandy. “I always fuckin’ forgive ya.”

 

“You shouldn’t.” If Paul didn’t know any better, he supposed he could say that John was crying now, fat twin tears on his gaunt cheeks, voice hiccupping slightly, mouth wet. But John doesn’t cry about Paul, not anymore. They stopped all that silliness a long time ago.

 

They stopped crying in the ashram. Or, well- John stopped. Paul cried a few more times after that, and John pretended not to know about it.

 

“I know.”

 

“I DIDN’T _MEAN_ IT!” John suddenly yells, words tripping over one another, and Paul rests a hand to his forehead, closing his eyes tightly, willing the image of John slumped in a chair, kicking out into oblivion, another _Lennon-rage_ spectacular. Outbursts of passion had always been their forte. Paul had just thought he’d seen his last one a long time ago. “I didn’t fucking mean to do it, Paul…” John says, quieter. “I didn’t mean to make ya cry. I _didn’t._ ”

 

“I _know_. I-”

 

“ _John?_ ” another voice joins the airwaves, soft and demure, tone lingering just on the wrong side of hesitant and Paul’s heart sinks into his stomach. He’d recognise her voice anywhere. Yoko had taught him to never confuse timidity with weakness. “ _John, what are you doing on the phone so late? Who are you talking to?”_

 

“Nobody.” John says, voice softening instantly. Paul can picture Yoko, stalking into the room, wrapped in one of those stupid silk robes she’d paraded around his house in, low at the chest, red marks shaped likes John’s teeth spread across her pale flesh, out in the open. Francie had always raised her eyebrows, wondered why she never _covered up_ in front of them. Paul never answered. He knew exactly why. “It’s nobody, love.”

 

“ _Will you come to bed?”_

 

“Of course I will.”

 

“ _You’re drunk_.”

 

“Of course I am.”

 

“ _Who are you talking to_?”

 

“Nobody.” John repeats, but his voice is far away now, as if he’s gotten up and left the telephone behind. It dawns on Paul a second too late that this is exactly what John has done, his breaths no longer ticking Paul’s ear, his cigarette smoke stale and abandoned. John has forgotten all about the other soul clinging to the end of the line, hanging off his every word, glued to the phone to catch just a few seconds of his genius, even if it is expressed through slurring misery.

 

“-Just an old friend.” John says to Yoko, and then there is a sigh, followed by a pause, before the secondary voice joins him at the other end of the telephone, both timid and ferocious, quiet and deafening.

 

“ _I’m sorry, John has to go to bed. He is not feeling well. Who is this? Can I help?”_

 

For one frozen, shell-shocked second, Paul wonders if anything he might say could make this look any less bad. If John wasn’t in the dog-house already for getting sloshed and waking the world at four in the morning, getting sloshed and ringing up his ex-lover to dedicate a song ought to do it.

 

“ _Hello_?” Yoko says, and Paul swallows the last of his brandy. Only the one glass, so far. So far, not enough for Linda to stare at him across the kitchen table with a queasy mix of concern and disappointment in her gaze. “ _Is anybody there?”_

 

Paul wipes the tear that threatens to stray from his cheek with the back of his hand, before taking a deep breath, and removing the receiver from his ear. Slowly, he puts the phone back on its hook, and the line cuts dead. Yoko doesn’t call back, although he waits a solid five or six minutes, just in case she does. Just in case he gets a second chance at ruining her evening. Just in case John crawls back out of bed and has another drink, another _puff_ , and perhaps feels chatty again.

 

But the phone doesn’t ring again. Paul wakes up six hours later to Linda shaking his shoulder, a crick in is neck and the same Brandy bottle staring at him, half empty, along with three more stumped out cigarettes and half of a forgotten joint in the ashtray.

 

“What happened?” she asks, so kind and gentle and sympathetic, the complete embodiment of everything he’s never thought he deserves. “Who were you speaking to?”

 

“Nobody.” Paul says, stretching his aching limbs as he clamours out of the chair, joints aching. He pulls Linda into his arms and hugs her tightly, eyes trained on the notepad he’d left by the phone, snippets of John’s slurred lyrics scribbled across the page. “Just an old friend.”


End file.
